The Crown and the Flame
by By Dark of Day
Summary: Four children fight a deadly war. Some of them become heroes. All of them become murderers.


**The Crown and the Flame**

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_Life Giver_

The girl watches the boy put his hands on the hellhound; watches his fingers weave torn flesh and spilt blood. Even in the midday glare she can see the constellation of stars spilling down the boy's arms and stitching the monster's wound.

The boy, crouched over the wretched houndoom, spares the girl no attention. He whispers in the firebreather's ear: "Hush. I'll make you right."

The girl narrows her eyes. She hefts the axe at her side skyward.

Steel parts flesh with a wet thud, the houndoom's head slopping from its neck and blood spurting over the boy's chest.

The boy whips around. He glares at the girl. With clenched teeth he puts his hands to the parted neck of the monster and whispers again, "I'll make you right."

Light cascades from the boy to the dog, mending bone and melding flesh. The brightness reaches out from where the boy's fingers meet the monster's skin until the white embrace engulfs the houndoom.

The girl's eyes widen, her mouth falling open as the monster's teeth begin to gnash. She snarls and rakes her axe through its skull, splitting it in two.

Blood sprays the boy's face. He flinches, then glares again at the girl as he wipes the red from his cheek. He puts his hands again on the monster.

Before he speaks the girl severs the monster's neck. She kicks both pieces of the skull down the cliff into the gulley gushing below.

"Murderer!" screams the boy, whipping to his feet and grabbing her sleeve.

She snatches her arm from him. She says, "Didn't your parents teach you not to stitch up monsters?"

The boy whirls from her and crouches in the dirt. With one hand on the corpse he says, "My parents are dead."

"Then I'll teach you," says the girl. She scrapes her axe through the dust, feeding the monster's blood to the earth. She says to the boy, "You don't heal the things that want to kill you."

The boy turns to her, glaring yet again. Despite the blood staining his face he looks nothing like a warrior.

The girl takes a dagger from her belt and tosses it beside him. "You kill them first," she says. "Anything that wants to kill you – you kill it first."

She offers him her hand, which is scarred and bloody.

He goes on glaring for a moment. Then he takes her dagger with one hand, and her hand with the other.

A trail of white sparks march out from where their fingers meet, closing the bite marks on the girl's arm and the long gashes on her neck. She looks down at her flesh made new, then looks up at the boy, trying to keep the wonder out of her face.

He lets go of her hand and throws the dagger at her feet. He says, "I'm no murderer."

Then he turns and walks away, through the litter of human corpses and swords, back toward the smoldering remains of the village beyond the hills where the easterners raise their golden eye into the sky.

"No, just stupid!" she shouts as he leaves her. "I didn't drag you out of there-"

"I have to find my sister," he says, still walking. "If she's still-"

"-She's not," says the girl. She sprints to his side and grabs him by the arm, forcing him to look at her. She says into his face, "Everyone's dead, okay? Charcoal. I stuck my neck out so you wouldn't end up like them. Don't-"

He grabs the collar of her shirt. His face, she thinks, finally looks worthy.

"Why not the rest?" he says. His round eyes harden and his soft lips curl into a snarl, his delicate features arranging into the sharpest expression they can manage. "You could have saved more. Why'd you take me?"

"You're Touched!" she snaps. She shoves him away from her, and wipes uselessly at the stains he's left. She says, "You don't heal with the Art, you just do it. You're just like the monsters."

He glances at the houndoom, robbed of its head, its corpse a lost tangle on the dust of the hills.

The girl sweeps her hand at the dead flesh, her red hair catching on the breeze. The pokemon's body erupts into fire.

Smoke and the smell of burning fill the air.

The boy takes a step away from her, the anger slicked from his face. He says, "That's why you didn't burn..."

The girl crosses her arms and stares hard at the corpse set aflame. "You and me and the dog," she says. "We're all monsters."


End file.
